Egyptian novelist, doctor and militant writer on Arab women's problems and their struggle for liberation, Nawal el Saadawi was born in the village of Kafr Tahla. Refusing to accept the limitations imposed by both religious and colonial oppression on most women of rural origin, she qualified as a doctor in 1955 and rose to become Egypt's Director of Public Health. Since she began to write over 30 years ago, her books have concentrated on women. In 1972, her first work of non fiction, Women and Sex, evoked the antagonism of highly placed political and theological authorities, and the Ministry of Health was pressurised into dismissing her. Under similar pressures she lost her post as Chief Editor of a health journal and as Assistant General Secretary in the Medical Association in Egypt. From 1973 to 1976 she worked on researching women and neurosis in the Ain Shams University's Faculty of Medicine; and from 1979 to 1980 she was the United Nations Advisor for the Women's Programme in Africa (ECA) and Middle East (ECWA). Later in 1980, as a culmination of the long war she had fought for Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom, an activity that had closed all avenues of official jobs to her, she was imprisoned under the Sadat regime. She has since founded the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and devoted her time to being a writer, journalist and worldwide speaker on women's issues.

With the publication by Zed Books in 1980 of The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, English language readers were first introduced to the work of this major writer. Zed Books has also published four of her previous novels, Woman at Point Zero (1983), God Dies by the Nile (1985), The Circling Song (1989) and Searching (1991) as well as a collection of her non-fiction writings The Nawal El Saadawi Reader (1997). She has received three literary awards.

A collection of the non-fiction writing of Nawal el Saadawi, spanning feminism, religion, and the position of women in the Middle East and around the world.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Gendering South-North Politics
1. Women and the Poor: The Challenge of Global Justice
2. Women in the South in Relation to Women in the North
3. Women's Voices in the North-South Dialogue
4. The Enigmatic South: Different Stages of Development
5. Cairo '94 and the Dignity of Feeding Oneself

Part II: Women's Health
6. Women and Health in the Arab World
7. The Bitter Lot of Women: An Interview

Part III: Women/Islam/Fundamentalism
8. Women and Islam
9. Islamic Fundamentalism and Women
10. The Impact of Fanatic Religious Thought: A Story of a Young Egyptian Muslim Woman
11. Fundamentalism: Old Friend, New Enemy

Part IV: Orientalizing Women
12. Why Keep Asking Me About My Identity?
13. Women, Religion and Literature: Bridging the Cultural Gap.
14. Women and Development: A Critical View of the Wellesley Conference

Part V: Decolonizing the Imagination
15. Dissidence and Creativity
16. Culture in the Dialogue of Civilizations
17. Democracy, Creativity and African Literature
18. Creative Women in Changing Societies
19. Prosecutive Journalism
20. Seeking the True Colour of Things

Part VI: Women Organizing for Change
21. Arab Women and Politics
22. Women in Resistance: The Arab World
23. Women and Politics in Britain

Index